By all accounts, you were just sweatpants.Silk color-blocked parachute pants with a paper bag waist and a drop
crotch to make MC Hammer proud, with the kind of sheen usually reserved
for 80s classic, satin nightmares, to be exact. You were also, in case
you’ve forgotten, white and red, which I suppose could have veered into a
lurid Santa Claus, Happy Birthday Murrica! sort of danger zone – but
which only read to me as infinite possibilities. It’s like you were
just sitting there, waiting for me. For me! And I wanted you
desperately.But when I tried you on, my dreams of proprietorship
died spectacularly. Your waist did nothing for my waist. The way your
generous, buttery fabric pooled down to my knees was in direct contrast
to the way it seemed to be held aloft by my butt like a tent and its
pole, and yet all that concealment only seemed to make my already solid
thighs even more prominent. Your leg tapered down too sharply toward my
ankle, and that white racing stripe down your side created a violent
winding road down my leg. Despite our comprehensive differences, though,
I loved you. I wanted to have you. But I put you down. My body would
have failed you.We all have horror stories rooted in the unforgiving changing room
that stem from our stupid rules about looking a certain way when
shopping for bathing suits or crisp new jeans and avoiding, say, peplums
if our hips can’t lie.But – hello, earth to reader – the human body comes in all shapes and
sizes. This is so platitudinal and obvious that it’s gross. It is also,
however, the one truth we seem most hell-bent on disproving.Whether we’re elongating or slimifying or Spanx-ing or Wonderbra-ing,
we’re always expecting clothes to do something for us but maybe we
should start thinking less about what the clothes – or more specifically
in this case, the pants – can do for us, and more about what we can do
for them.How clothing makes us feel is a complex subject and the attached
emotions run an extensive gamut. What concerns me, really, is that it
seems like our emotions are tethered to the opinions of other people. I
really did like those parachute pants. I could have made concessions in
the arena of that which is pleasing-to-the-thigh but I knew I’d get the
judgmental gaze, the confounded stare, and I wasn’t ready for that.
People wouldn’t understand that I’d made the proactive decision to
abandon what looks conventionally “good” in order to feel unilaterally
good. Those pants were what I now call Do You! clothes–wherein my body
is my body and no one else’s, thus rendering any external opinions
certifiably moot.So if you’re listening, stop-sign sweatpants, I’m sorry I let you
pass into the realm of Clothing That Could Have Been. I hope your
current owner treats you the way you’re supposed to be treated: like a
vessel of self-expression. I shouldn’t have deemed myself unworthy of
you based on such silly pretenses. If only on that day I had remembered
the cardinal rule care of one Little Miss Sunshine: wear what you love,
and fuck the rest.